When is National Name Your Poison Day?

Thursday June 8th

On June 8th, there are only a few options available to you and the challenge is for you to choose. In this case, the idiom can be a cautionary tale or it could be your bartender's way of asking you what you want to drink.

#nameyourpoisonday

"The new trend in Washington, D.C., asking a party what they should drink is – please nominate your poison, gentlemen," the Daily National Republican in Washington, D.C., said in its March 24, 1864 edition. People in Indiana attributed the colloquial term to people in Indiana. The tale made its way to newspapers around the country, and by 1867 writers, who attributed the colloquial term to people in Indiana.

Although "nominate your poison" refers back to the beginnings of the temperance movement, the term seems to have mostly described the act of ordering the drink. Even as the mayor of New Bavaria, Ohio, introduced a bill requiring all drinkers to apply for drinking licenses was in use in 1914. The word comes in several senses – pick, choose, or name – and of course nominate your poison.